When college student Rena Collins finds herself nose-to-chest with the campus outcast, her rumor-laced notions are shattered. Handsome, considerate, and seemingly sane, Wallace Blake doesn’t look like he spends his nights alone, screaming and banging on the walls of his dorm room. Hell, he doesn’t look like he spends his nights alone, period.

Too curious for her own good, Rena vows to uncover the truth behind Wallace’s madman reputation--and how two seconds of contact had left her with bruises. Of course, there are a few setbacks along the way: guilt, admiration, feelings of the warm and fuzzy variety…

Not to mention the unwanted attention of Wallace's powerful, supernaturally-gifted family.

They’re a bloodline divided by opposing ideals, two soon-to-be warring factions that live in secret among us. When Rena ends up caught in their crossfire, Wallace has no choice but to save her by using his powers. Now they’re really in trouble. With war on the horizon and Rena’s life in the balance, he needs to put some distance between them. But Rena won’t let go. If fighting is what it takes to prove her own strength and keep Wallace in her life, then that’s what she’ll do--even if it means risking a whole lot more than her heart.

Excerpt:Hinges creaked and something slammed into me full force. The impact burned my nose and forehead as the world tilted back in a sickening blur. It all happened so fast. I hadn’t even seen the door open.

And, just like that, everything stopped.

Something—no, someone—grabbed my shoulders in a death grip and steadied me on my feet. I lurched forward, struggling to right my balance, and found myself nose-to-chest with a stranger.

Damn, that hurt...

Concern tightened his features as he bent down and tried to meet my eyes. “Are you okay?”

My pulse protested, hammering in my ears. Was I okay? I opened my mouth to speak, but it was as if every word, every unintelligible utterance, had escaped me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. My breaths were way too shallow.

Was I having a panic attack?

His eyes narrowed, dark lashes obscuring an electrical storm of emotion. I’d never seen anything more caged—flickering and surging beneath the surface. Brooding cerulean one moment, hypnotic blue the next.

It was all I could do to suppress a shiver as the warmth of his breath danced over my skin, his scent clouding the air between us. God, it smelled so familiar, like the air before a downpour. I took a deep, shuddering breath and forced myself to look up.

Raven hues played across hair that’d been spiked without any obvious effort. Overlooking the lack of product, his haphazard style could’ve probably been described as a fauxhawk. If he cared enough to label it.

I shook my head, letting my gaze slip past the hardened planes of his expression. A silvery line stood out from the rough, morning stubble that peppered his jaw. I swallowed. A small part of me was intrigued beyond measure, but it was so foreign I couldn’t place it. Instead, I let a much more familiar emotion run rampant through my system, the one that’d been building for the past thirty seconds—panic.

“I-I...” I stammered, unable to form a coherent thought to save my life.

Something changed in his eyes, and for the briefest of seconds, I thought I caught a glimpse of hurt. Just like that, the spell had been broken. He tore himself away from me as if I’d burned him, straightening to his full height.

Carrie daydreamed her way through college—until they thrust a marketing degree into her hands, slapped a summa cum laude seal on the corner, and booted her out into a less-than-stellar job market. Instead of panicking at the prospect of unemployment, she used her Midwestern logic to steer into the skid and point her life in the direction she really wanted to go: writing out those daydreams.